The BET starts tomorrow, so today is the day for stories waxing nostalgic for past BETs and the excitement for the future of the BET. And of course, what to expect starting tomorrow..

The Associated Press headline on their story, suggests that the BET title game could be something of a familiar story.

Meanwhile, NYC seems ready for the BET even without St. John’s being anywhere close to being involved. This piece is dripping with nostalgia.

The Big East Tournament begins again tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden.

Once again, New York City is a college basketball town.

In the final countdown hours, you can feel it building. Listen closely and you can almost hear its very heartbeat beyond the traffic … beyond the daily sounds of Midtown … it rides into town on the wings of the winds of March along cement canyons.

And it brings with it the Ghosts of Roundball Past … the ones that lit up this city with a passion in a world where passion used to call the shots. The NCAA reached out with dollar signs in its eyeballs to kill the NIT’s premier status as a tournament that spoke volumes of America’s recognition of what the old Madison Square Garden up the block between 49th and 50th on Eighth Avenue meant to the game.
…
The Big East is the last viable link between the way this city once was and what it becomes for a week each March, when the Big East Circus comes to town.

Back before the point-shaving scandals of 1950, college basketball owned this city. Doubleheaders were held at the Garden on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Hours before game time, you couldn’t walk in the middle of Eighth Avenue there was so much pedestrian traffic. They came from up out of the subways, filling the streets.

Irish saloons like Gilhooley’s and Downey’s were so packed before games, you almost had to butter your pants legs to squeeze in through all that humanity to claim a seat at the bar.

Sounds loverly — if you live in NYC. For the rest of us, I’ll take the present where the power teams are more diffused and more teams have a chance to become a good program. Where we have the cable, satellite and of course broadband internet.

For real nostalgia for the Big East Tournament you will find it, in the most surprising place. How about the Boston Globe?

For the Big East, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year and has produced the last two men’s national champions in Syracuse and Connecticut, this week’s conference tournament will be a last hurrah of sorts. The tournament began in Gavitt’s backyard, Providence, in 1980 as an intimate party of seven: Georgetown, Seton Hall, UConn, BC, St. John’s, Providence, and Syracuse. The conference is up to 12 teams, but next year it will explode into a mega-conference of 16, with the addition of DePaul, Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, and South Florida — and the subtraction of BC, which like its Big East brethren of the last few years, Miami and Virginia Tech, will jump to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The competition actually could be better than ever. But it will be different. Four of the 16 teams will not even receive invitations to the Garden party, which is still one of the shining moments of the college basketball season. And the sense of intimacy, of an annual family gathering, will be missing.

Actually it kind of makes sense for the BC beat writer to be more wistful about the change. His travel time is about to increase significantly. He has to learn new places to eat, the right hotels, find his way around new places.

I’ve said it before, given Pitt’s history in the Big East up until the last 5 years, I tend not to be too caught up in the nostalgia and wonderment over the Big East in the 80’s. For Pitt fans, that was a time of underachieving teams in the best of moments and doormat status for the rest. Still read the whole piece, especially for the issue of too many mascots.

The Big East individual awards are tonight. In advance read this story.

In The Syracuse Post-Standard’s annual poll of Big East assistant coaches, there are more than a few surprises.

Forget the all-league team. We wanted to know who is the league’s worst (or is it best?) trash-talker? Who has been the most disappointing player? What team is the most overrated? Which player is going to make the best pro? Which official is the worst?

The poll offered anonymity to assistant coaches from around the league to get the unvarnished truth to these questions and more. Eight assistant coaches responded to the poll.

Only 8?

Best garbage player:Chevon Troutman, Pittsburgh. Troutman out-garbaged Syracuse’s Josh Pace.

Biggest trash talker:Carl Krauser, Pittsburgh. The Pitt guard had some competition from BC’s Jared Dudley and his Eagle teammates.

“Dudley’s the worst,” an assistant said. “We almost got in a fight with those guys because they all talk (bleep).”
…
Biggest whiner – coach: Jim Calhoun, Connecticut. Two other coaches received one vote each.

“There’s only two choices, and they both have national championships and they both have 700 wins,” one assistant said, “but I’ll take Calhoun.”

Biggest whiner – player:A four-way tie between Hakim Warrick, Carl Krauser, Kelly Whitney and Chris Thomas.

“He cries for fouls instead of playing through it,” one assistant said of Warrick.

They also tabbed Troutman as best defender.